talks, we covered the bulletin boards with pictures of socialist statesmen and slogans about the happy future. At first I volunteered almost ostentatiously for these tasks. But nobody saw that as a sign of my political conscientiousness either: the others volunteered too, when they needed to attract the company commander's attention for an evening's leave. None of them thought of this political activity as political; it was an empty gesture that had to be offered up to those in power over us.
I finally understood that my rebellion was illusory, that my non-resemblance was perceptible only to me, that it was invisible to others.
Among the noncoms who had us at their mercy was a dark-haired Slovak, a corporal whose mild manners and utter lack of sadism set him off from the others. He was generally well liked, though there were some who claimed maliciously that his kind heart sprang only from his stupidity. Unlike us, of course, the noncoms carried arms, and from time to time they would go off for target practice. Once the dark-haired corporal came back from practice basking in the glory of a first in marksmanship. A number of us were particularly boisterous in our congratulations (half sympathetic, half mocking); the corporal blushed with pride.
Later that day, finding myself alone with him, I asked him, just for something to say:
"How come you're such a good shot?"
The corporal gave me a quizzical glance and said, "It's this trick I've worked out for myself. I pretend the bull's-eye is an imperialist, and I get so mad I never miss."
And before I could ask him what his imperialist looked like, he added in a serious, pensive voice, "I don't know what you're all congratulating me for. If there was a war on, you're the ones I'd be shooting at."
Hearing those words from the mouth of that good-hearted fellow, so incapable of shouting at us that he was later transferred, I realized that the line tying me to the Party and the Comrades had irrevocably slipped through my fingers. I had been thrown off my life's path.
6
Yes. All the lines were cut.
Broken off, my studies, my participation in the movement, my work, my friendships; broken off, love and the quest for love; in short, everything meaningful in the course of life, broken off. All I had left was time. Time I came to know intimately as never before.
It was not the time with which I had previously had dealings, a time metamorphosed into work, love, effort of every kind, a time I had accepted unthinkingly because it so discreetly hid behind my actions. Now it came to me stripped, just as it is, in its true and original form, and it forced me to call it by its true name (for now I was living sheer time, sheer empty time) so as not to forget it for a moment, keep it constantly before me, and feel its weight.
When music plays, we hear the melody, forgetting that it is only one of the modes of time; when the orchestra falls silent, we hear time; time itself. I was living in a pause. Not in an orchestra's general pause (whose length is clearly determined by a specific sign in the musical score), but in a pause without a determined end. We could not (as they did in other units) shave slivers off a tailor's measure to show the two-year stint shrinking day by day: men with black insignia could be kept on indefinitely. Forty-year-old Ambroz from the Second Company was in his fourth year.
Doing military service at that time and having a wife or fiancee at home was bitter: it meant vainly keeping constant long-distance guard over her unguardable existence; it meant living in constant fear that the company commander would cancel the leave he had promised for one of her rare visits and that she would wait at the camp gates in vain.
With a humor as black as their insignia, the men would tell stories of officers lying in ambush for those frustrated women and reaping the benefits that should have belonged to the soldiers confined to barracks.
And yet: the men with a woman at home had
I finally understood that my rebellion was illusory, that my non-resemblance was perceptible only to me, that it was invisible to others.
Among the noncoms who had us at their mercy was a dark-haired Slovak, a corporal whose mild manners and utter lack of sadism set him off from the others. He was generally well liked, though there were some who claimed maliciously that his kind heart sprang only from his stupidity. Unlike us, of course, the noncoms carried arms, and from time to time they would go off for target practice. Once the dark-haired corporal came back from practice basking in the glory of a first in marksmanship. A number of us were particularly boisterous in our congratulations (half sympathetic, half mocking); the corporal blushed with pride.
Later that day, finding myself alone with him, I asked him, just for something to say:
"How come you're such a good shot?"
The corporal gave me a quizzical glance and said, "It's this trick I've worked out for myself. I pretend the bull's-eye is an imperialist, and I get so mad I never miss."
And before I could ask him what his imperialist looked like, he added in a serious, pensive voice, "I don't know what you're all congratulating me for. If there was a war on, you're the ones I'd be shooting at."
Hearing those words from the mouth of that good-hearted fellow, so incapable of shouting at us that he was later transferred, I realized that the line tying me to the Party and the Comrades had irrevocably slipped through my fingers. I had been thrown off my life's path.
6
Yes. All the lines were cut.
Broken off, my studies, my participation in the movement, my work, my friendships; broken off, love and the quest for love; in short, everything meaningful in the course of life, broken off. All I had left was time. Time I came to know intimately as never before.
It was not the time with which I had previously had dealings, a time metamorphosed into work, love, effort of every kind, a time I had accepted unthinkingly because it so discreetly hid behind my actions. Now it came to me stripped, just as it is, in its true and original form, and it forced me to call it by its true name (for now I was living sheer time, sheer empty time) so as not to forget it for a moment, keep it constantly before me, and feel its weight.
When music plays, we hear the melody, forgetting that it is only one of the modes of time; when the orchestra falls silent, we hear time; time itself. I was living in a pause. Not in an orchestra's general pause (whose length is clearly determined by a specific sign in the musical score), but in a pause without a determined end. We could not (as they did in other units) shave slivers off a tailor's measure to show the two-year stint shrinking day by day: men with black insignia could be kept on indefinitely. Forty-year-old Ambroz from the Second Company was in his fourth year.
Doing military service at that time and having a wife or fiancee at home was bitter: it meant vainly keeping constant long-distance guard over her unguardable existence; it meant living in constant fear that the company commander would cancel the leave he had promised for one of her rare visits and that she would wait at the camp gates in vain.
With a humor as black as their insignia, the men would tell stories of officers lying in ambush for those frustrated women and reaping the benefits that should have belonged to the soldiers confined to barracks.
And yet: the men with a woman at home had
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